Film Wins at My Hero Contest

http://myhero.com/go/films/festival_winners.asp (Scroll to bottom of page)

There is a playlist of famous people in India speaking out for tigers at this link that will give you goosebumps. Very nicely done. http://www.kidsfortigers.org/

Recent House Votes

Budget Agreement passage – Vote Passed (332-94)

Before leaving for the rest of the year, the House passed legislation based on talks between House and Senate conferees that establishes a budget for fiscal 2014 and increases discretionary spending caps for fiscal 2014 and 2015 that would be offset by increases in passenger air travel fees and federal employee pension contributions and a two-year extension of sequester cuts to Medicare. The agreement raises the spending cap for this year to $1.012 trillion from the sequester level of $967 billion established in 2011. The bill modifies oil and gas programs to reduce spending by $4.5 billion over a decade and federal student loan debt collection that would save $5 billion. The compromise passed the House with 169 Republicans and 163 Democrats in support. The Senate is expected to vote on it this week.

Defense authorization passage – Vote Passed (350-69, 13 Not Voting)

In one of its final acts of the year, the House passed the defense bill (HR 3304) by a vote of 350-69, authorizing $625.1 billion, which would account for more than half of the federal governments discretionary spending in fiscal 2014. Including mandatory spending, the defense bill authorizes $632.8 billion. To save time in the waning days of the session, the defense authorization agreement was simply loaded onto a small House bill the Senate already had passed. The authorization bills is roughly $3.1 billion less than the fiscal 2013 enacted level. Of that, it would authorize $526.8 billion for the Defense Departments base budget, $80.7 billion for overseas contingency operations mainly the war in Afghanistan and $17.6 billion for national security programs within the Energy Department. In addition, the measure would make several statutory changes aimed at reducing sexual assaults in the military. It also would continue the existing ban on transferring detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba to the United States.

Congress Failed to Take a Vote to Protect Big Cats

But this is only the first half of a two year session and we will hit the ground running in January 2014 to end the private possession and public contact with big cats. Be sure to CALL your Senator and Representatives, or VISIT them in purr-son at their district offices, while they are home for the holidays, to ask them to support HR 1998 and S 1381 the Big Cats and Public Safety Protection Act. We just found out today that one of the lobbyist who has been hired to try and defeat our bill is working for this criminal. When bills like this one do get to the floor for a vote, they usually pass pretty much unanimously, but to get to the floor, the members of congress need to know that their voters think it is important. They need to hear from YOU.